• How has the Shinkansen system expanded since the construction of the earliest stations?
• How are Shinkansen stations (and lines) distributed geographically across Japan in 2024?
• What are the key characteristics of Shinkansen stations in Japan?
• What are the preferences of operating companies regarding Shinkansen lines and distances from Tokyo Station?
• What is the relationship between a station’s year of opening and the distance from Tokyo Station?

• The Shinkansen system is a key component of Japan’s economy and culture, connecting major cities and regions.
• Understanding the system’s development and characteristics can provide insights into Japan’s transportation infrastructure.
• Analyzing the relationship between station attributes and operating companies can inform future expansion and improvements.
• Visualizing the Shinkansen system can enhance public awareness and appreciation of this iconic transportation network.

• The data for the 113 Shinkansen stations were retrieved from a Kaggle dataset (https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/japandata509/shinkansen-stations-in-japan/data).
• Location information was added throgh Google API using the geocode function from the ggmap package, achieving 97 successful matches.
• 8 locations were matched and added from the Japan Cities Database at simplemaps.com (https://simplemaps.com/data/jp-cities).
• 8 locations were manually hardcoded.

• Station_Name: the name of the station (English)
• Shinkansen_Line: the line that the station belongs
• Year: The year when the station opened
• Prefecture: The prefecture where the station is located
• Distance.from.Tokyo.st: the distance (km) from Tokyo station to the station
• Company: the company that has the station
• lat: latitude
• lon: longitude

• The kaggle dataset described did not contain data for the various Shinkansen lines throughout Japan.
• The coordinate sets for 8 Shinkansen Lines were obtained via a .KML file, downloadable through Google Maps (https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1lVfyVEXxwWxrMjp9x1-9IDWLGlg&hl=en&ll=36.43907144161917%2C139.30170312654266&z=6).
• Hardcoding of lines not included in this file was less feasible (linestrings; not long/lat coordinate pairs)

Note: There are 7 intersection stations, and we count the number of Shinkansen_Line twice for the intersection stations. For this, we split the string in the Shinkansen_Line column when it has both Shinkansen line names and unnest the data.

• Retrieve and clean the Shinkansen station data.
• Retrieve the Shinkansen line data and define lines.
  
• Map plots - Expansion of Shinkansen System up to the present day.
• Box plots - Analysing characteristics of the operating companies.
• Network plot - Exploring the relationship between year of opening and the distance to Tokyo.